You wake up.
It's strange—your vision is
tilt (text-rotate-z:19)[ing]
but the ceiling rights itself as you sit up. You're on a bed, the blankets disordered, the drapes on the window to your right hanging askew. The walls are made of stone, naked of decoration. Your feet are bare.
To your left is a door, wooden and old. To your right, a latched window.
[[Window]]
[[Door]]The floor is cold against your feet — it sends a shock through your legs. The door opens easily, but it's strange — your hands hurt — and you see a flight of stairs.
You remember a flash of something briefly, grasping for wisps of memory. A holiday had just passed — every year, your village gets together to feast and light bonfires to keep away an ancient monster of worn myth who emerges from the forest to eat children.
Slowly, you descend, touching the freezing wall for support. You reach the bottom and see a body sprawled on the floor — a child with a bloodied face, a broken nose, wild hair. Next to the child is an older woman — perhaps a nanny.
[[Inspect the Child]]You walk over, unsteadily, to the window, unlatch it, and look out. You're high up, above the trees, inside the tallest building around for miles of forest. Scattered along the dusty roads below are little wooden huts.
The sky has taken on an autumn glow, hazy and tangerine.
[[Door]]You hurry on, fight the dizziness, the need to vomit. Something's not right.
You come to a crossroads. To your right is a dark hallway, lit occasionally with sputtering torches and with a visible door at the end, slightly ajar. To your left is a hallway with magnificent tapestries that turns a corner to somewhere you can't see.
[[Right hallway]]
[[Left hallway]]You proceed carefully down the right hallway. Along the walls are cracked mirrors that show you fractured reflections of yourself, the torches throwing your features into sputtering flickers. Your face is stained with blood. Horrified, you try wiping it off, but it seems like it's been there so long it's dried.
Bits and pieces of memory are coming back to you now. The holiday bonfires had been great, the flames bright — but they weren't enough. The monster of legend, birthed from bark and leaf, had come crawling out of the woods, ready to raze and devour.
You and the village had fought and fought, the screaming and the running shrouded in the fog of your mind.
You come to the end of the hallway, where a small paper note sits, as if it had fallen out of a pocket, in front of the door.
[[Open the door]]
[[Pick up the note]]The tapestries along this hall are so lovely, hand-woven, glinting with hues you don't have names for. They hang heavy, telling stories of a happy village, of great, tall trees, of a king, queen and their children living in a towering castle.
As you proceed down the hall, the tapestries turn darker, both in color and in tale. The artwork becomes frenzied, depicting a frothing monster with cracked bark for skin, no eyes, and a gaping maw.
You turn the corner and find a woman — she's alive! — cowering on the floor, her clothes dirtied, her hair matted. Her eyes widen at the sight of you and she screams.
You gasp and try to ask her what is wrong. She pushes herself against the wall, as far away from you as she can.
[[Try to calm the woman down]]
No use. Turn around and go back. [[Right hallway]]The note is wrinkled, scrawled with desperate writing.
//I don't understand why this is happening but it is inside the castle, we kept it out for now but if we open that door it'll//
[[Open the door]]
Go back! [[Left hallway]]You are trembling and can't seem to control it. The door has clearly suffered some kind of scuffing on its side, like it had been forcibly ripped open.
Tentatively, you nudge the door open. The other side of the door has fingernail marks in it — the monster had scratched deep and long. Bloodied footsteps tell of some creature pacing back and forth, the prints overlapping each other.
Fury eats at your skin.
Your poor boy — this was the thing that had felled him where he stood, once bright and brimming with electricity.
You realize that the room you're standing in is an armory. The monster had pushed things over — swords lie scattered on the floor, axes thrown on top of each other — but no weapons seem to be missing. The creature must have been in a senseless rage.
[[Pick a weapon]]
[[Continue on]]
It's a young boy. He looks lionhearted, like he went down fighting. Claw marks etch a painting on his face, the ink scarlet, his eyes open and staring.
You reach out to feel for a pulse even while suspecting what is already true. His little neck is quiet — no thrumming rhythm of life. He looks vaguely familiar — you shake your head.
The nose, though broken, has a familiar tip, the hair formed with a certain texture.
It's your son.
You get up in a rush, your heart racing. What happened?
[[Keep Going]]
The swords call to you like a first instinct, your finger muscles twitching. You think you were once a great swordsman — but when? How long ago? The swords are dull but look like they could still slice skin.
The axes sport sharp tips, resembling the jaws of some leviathan. They look cumbersome and heavy, though — and you feel weak. Could you really wield it if the situation arose?
There's a single shield on the floor. It looks like it's been heavily used already, probably in some past training session. But there's something about the reliable thickness of it that makes it appealing.
[[Choose a sword]]
[[Choose an axe]]
[[Choose the shield]]Perhaps a weapon will just slow you down. Besides, you feel so jittery it probably wouldn't help anyway.
You leave the armory, fighting for breath. There's a turn in the hallway that leads to a set of old oak double doors.
[[Open those double doors]]The sword you choose slides into your grip like an old friend, the hilt sturdy. Your heartbeat slows with it in your hand — maybe you can face whatever killed your son. You leave the armory. There's a turn in the hallway that leads to a set of old oak double doors.
Go back and explore the [[left hallway]]
[[Open the double doors]]Straining, you pick up the axe. With some power, it could do some serious damage. You hold onto it with a fierce desperation.
You leave the armory. There's a turn in the hallway that leads to a set of old oak double doors.
Go back and explore the [[left hallway]] or
[[open the double doors]]
The shield fits along your arm like a glove. You instantly feel relieved. It's held up through so many training sessions — it should protect you now.
You leave the armory. There's a turn in the hallway that leads to a set of old oak double doors.
Go back and explore the [[left hallway]] or
[[push open the double doors]]Weapon in hand, you tentatively push open the double doors. They creak, creak...
and (text-rotate-x:5)+(text-rotate-y:49)[turn,] opening slowly.
The first thing you see is a woman, golden-haired, lying on the floor, her neck twisted in a horrific position, her eyes wide and unseeing, old blood in a long-dried trickle staining her lips. You know immediately who it is — your wife. A crown, radiant as the sun, lies on its side a few paces from her head.
Right next to her is a little girl, button-nosed and long-lashed, dressed in a tulle gown you had designed for her on her birthday — just yesterday. A daughter. Your daughter. She looks just like you, you've always been told. And you see it now, in death — the parted mouth, the slack forehead, which, in life, was always scrunched in laughter.
You're in a throne room. They lie like dolls in front of a magnificent dais, where two empty seats stand.
Something snarls at your back. You whirl around and see the monster, born of grime, of woods, of something old and rotted and turned. It has no eyes but instead a gaping mouth, lined with arrow-sharp, decaying teeth, and it opens it to
(text-colour:red)[//''S C R E A M ''//]
and comes charging at you. It has arms made of tree bark, a scaly torso, and clawed feet and hands, all crawling with maggots.
You
[[Swing your sword]]
[[Dodge]]Your sword makes impact but glances off the tree-bark skin. It's not sharp enough.
The monster's hair-raising scream is still going, and it knocks into you. You're flat on your back on the ground, and it sinks its teeth into your shoulder.
Fire burns into your skin, and you jab the butt of your sword into the creature's temple, making it shriek and recoil.
You roll away, gasping. Blood is all along the floor, pooling around your wife and daughter, almost in a halo-like way.
[[Swing again]]
[[RUN]]You leap out of the creature's way, but it pivots so quickly you almost don't have time to react. It comes back with a tenacity and you barely snatch yourself out of its gnashing jaws.
[[Swing your sword]]
[[RUN]]Clutching your shoulder, you aim for another hit at the creature, putting all your force into it. It hits true and sinks — just barely — into the creature's skin, but it only growls at you, its maw slick with some black saliva.
It reaches around and grabs you by the waist, then tosses you to the ground several feet away.
The wind gets knocked out of you and you lay there, head throbbing, waiting for your death.
But the creature never comes.
Slowly, you turn your head. Your shoulder doesn't hurt anymore — there aren't even any claw marks on it — and when you look, there is no looming monster, dripping with shadow and blood.
You stand up, shaking, and see that your wife and daughter, ~~who the monster killed~~, are still on the ground, still broken.
Wait.
The throne room has a massive mirror hanging on the wall, cracked down the front. In it, you see yourself like you did in the hall — your face is smeared with blood, but especially around your mouth. You look at your hands — strange, dark, bark-like veins are retracting into your skin.
Next to your wife's crown is another that you didn't see before — large, heavy, laden with jewels like stars.
Your crown.
You were a king.
~~You killed your wife and daughter and son and your people and~~
No, it can't be
~~But it is but it is but it is but~~
it is.
You fall to the floor. In the mirror, a mouth slowly widens, the teeth lengthening, black bark crawling up a neck, hardening. Two eyes — separated by the jagged crack in the mirror — fold into a face, folding, folding, until they're almost gone.
Those eyes — the eyes you gave your son — are the last thing you see.
Go back to
The [[Beginning]] You take off out of the room, listening to the pursuit of the creature snapping behind you.
There's a door — you skid to a stop, throw it open, and hurl yourself out into the blush of a fading autumn day. All around you are bodies. They're everywhere. They're
corpses on corpses on corpses and (text-style:"blur")[legs and arms and hair and hands and feet ](text-style:"blurrier")[and ripped clothes and corpses tangled with corpses and overlapping arms flung over](text-style:"smear")[ (text-style:"blurrier")[corpses that lie on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses]]
(text-style:"italic")[''STOP,'']
you tell yourself.
You keep running, into the woods, tripping only a few times over an outstretched limb or other. The embrace of the trees bring comfort to you. Only briefly, you think of that throne room, of the crown by your wife.
You were a king.
You've escaped the creature, even though you couldn't protect your people or your family.
The wet ground gives softly beneath every pounding footstep. You're safe.
It feels like you're missing something, but you're safe.
Try to figure out what happened by going back to
The [[Beginning]] The tapestries along this hall are so lovely, hand-woven, glinting with hues you don't have names for. They hang heavy, telling stories of a happy village, of great, tall trees, of a king, queen and their children living in a towering castle.
As you proceed down the hall, the tapestries turn darker, both in color and in tale. The artwork becomes frenzied, depicting a frothing monster with cracked bark for skin, no eyes, and a gaping maw.
You turn the corner and find a woman — she's alive! — cowering on the floor, her clothes dirtied, her hair matted. Her eyes widen at the sight of you and she screams.
You gasp and try to ask her what is wrong. She pushes herself against the wall, as far away from you as she can.
[[Calm the woman down]]Weapon in hand, you tentatively push open the double doors. They creak, creak...
and (text-rotate-x:5)+(text-rotate-y:49)[turn,] opening slowly.
The first thing you see is a woman, golden-haired, lying on the floor, her neck twisted in a horrific position, her eyes wide and unseeing, old blood in a long-dried trickle staining her lips. You know immediately who it is — your wife. A crown, radiant as the sun, lies on its side a few paces from her head.
Right next to her is a little girl, button-nosed and long-lashed, dressed in a tulle gown you had designed for her on her birthday — just yesterday. A daughter. Your daughter. She looks just like you, you've always been told. And you see it now, in death — the parted mouth, the slack forehead, which, in life, was always scrunched in laughter.
You're in a throne room. They lie like dolls in front of a magnificent dais, where two empty seats stand.
Something snarls at your back. You whirl around and see the monster, born of grime, of woods, of something old and rotted and turned. It has no eyes but instead a gaping mouth, lined with arrow-sharp, decaying teeth, and it opens it to
(text-colour:red)[//''S C R E A M ''//]
and comes charging at you. It has arms made of tree bark, a scaly torso, and clawed feet and hands, all crawling with maggots.
You
[[Swing your axe]]
[[RUN]]The axe is too heavy. You use the most force you can muster and lift it off the ground, grunting.
Instead of hacking into the creature, the axe, barely at knee-level, trips it, sending the monster crashing onto the ground.
Seeing your chance, you yell and bring your foot down on the creature, using both hands to finally lift the axe and bring it, deep, into the monster's back. Black sap oozes out, dark and ugly, overflowing onto your feet, but you don't care. Again and again you cleave and cut and stab,
(text-colour:red)[(text-style:"shadow")[again and again and again and again and again and again]]
until the monster stops moving.
You step back, breathing hard.
Your vision clears of red, and you see that your wife and daughter are still on the ground, but you're somehow right in front of them. Your wife's face is now caved in, her head connected to her neck but only by a sinew, her arms and shoulders completely hacked apart. Your baby daughter is unrecognizable next to her. You can't pick out the features that she inherited from you.
Wait.
The throne room has a massive mirror hanging on the wall, cracked down the front. In it, you see yourself like you did in the hall — your face is smeared with blood, but especially around your mouth. You look at your hands — strange, dark, bark-like veins are retracting into your skin.
The axe clatters from your hand.
Next to your wife's crown is another that you didn't see before — large, heavy, laden with jewels like stars.
Your crown.
You were a king.
~~You killed your wife and daughter and son and your people and~~
No, it can't be
~~But it is but it is but it is but~~
it is.
You fall to the floor. In the mirror, a mouth slowly widens, the teeth lengthening, black bark crawling up a neck, hardening. Two eyes — separated by the jagged crack in the mirror — fold into a face, folding, folding, until they're almost gone.
Those eyes — the eyes you gave your son — are the last thing you see.
Go back to
The [[Beginning]]
Weapon in hand, you tentatively push open the double doors. They creak, creak...
and (text-rotate-x:5)+(text-rotate-y:49)[turn,] opening slowly.
The first thing you see is a woman, golden-haired, lying on the floor, her neck twisted in a horrific position, her eyes wide and unseeing, old blood in a long-dried trickle staining her lips. You know immediately who it is — your wife. A crown, radiant as the sun, lies on its side a few paces from her head.
Right next to her is a little girl, button-nosed and long-lashed, dressed in a tulle gown you had designed for her on her birthday — just yesterday. A daughter. Your daughter. She looks just like you, you've always been told. And you see it now, in death — the parted mouth, the slack forehead, which, in life, was always scrunched in laughter.
You're in a throne room. They lie like dolls in front of a magnificent dais, where two empty seats stand.
Something snarls at your back. You whirl around and see the monster, born of grime, of woods, of something old and rotted and turned. It has no eyes but instead a gaping mouth, lined with arrow-sharp, decaying teeth, and it opens it to
(text-colour:red)[//''S C R E A M ''//]
and comes charging at you. It has arms made of tree bark, a scaly torso, and clawed feet and hands, all crawling with maggots.
You
[[Use your shield to block the attack]]
[[RUN]]The monster crashes into your shield, but although you hear a slight splintering sound, your shield holds. You use the opportunity to bash the monster's head with the shield's edge and turn around to escape.
You make it past the doors but hear the monster roar in fury and scramble after you, its claws clacking on the floor. You're running as fast as you can but your vision is pulsing and you feel horribly dizzy. The ground tilts, but you push your hand against the wall and right yourself.
The creature's claws close around your leg and sends you sprawling to the ground. Its rotten foot steps on the arm holding your shield, and you gasp as it stares down, eyeless, at you, its saliva dripping onto your mouth.
Its teeth glint like oil in the light before the whole world
(text-rotate-x:326)[//''blacks out''//]
Try again by going back to
The [[Beginning]] Weapon in hand, you tentatively push open the double doors. They creak, creak...
and (text-rotate-x:5)+(text-rotate-y:49)[turn,] opening slowly.
The first thing you see is a woman, golden-haired, lying on the floor, her neck twisted in a horrific position, her eyes wide and unseeing, old blood in a long-dried trickle staining her lips. You know immediately who it is — your wife. A crown, radiant as the sun, lies on its side a few paces from her head.
Right next to her is a little girl, button-nosed and long-lashed, dressed in a tulle gown you had designed for her on her birthday — just yesterday. A daughter. Your daughter. She looks just like you, you've always been told. And you see it now, in death — the parted mouth, the slack forehead, which, in life, was always scrunched in laughter.
You're in a throne room. They lie like dolls in front of a magnificent dais, where two empty seats stand.
Something snarls at your back. You whirl around and see the monster, born of grime, of woods, of something old and rotted and turned. It has no eyes but instead a gaping mouth, lined with arrow-sharp, decaying teeth, and it opens it to
(text-colour:red)[//''S C R E A M ''//]
and comes charging at you. It has arms made of tree bark, a scaly torso, and clawed feet and hands, all crawling with maggots.
You
[[attempt to stay and fight]]
[[RUN]]You lift an arm to block the impact of the creature's charge, but it's too powerful — it knocks you to the ground and closes its jaws around your leg.
You scream in pain, trying to crawl away, but the creature is too fast. Its claws dig into your back and bleeding stars explode in your vision, (text-style:"blur")[blocking the bodies of your] (text-style:"blurrier")[wife and daughter.]
They are the last things you see before a growl above makes your world fade to
(text-rotate-x:326)[//''black''//]
Try again by going back to
The [[Beginning]] You crouch down on your knees and extend your hands to show that you don't want to hurt her.
The woman stops screaming but she still looks like a trapped animal, eyes bright with a violent fear.
[["What happened?"]]
[["Did I do something?"]]
The woman's lips quiver. She doesn't want to talk, you can tell, but you stay where you are and she barely forces the words out.
"The monster — the monster came and we couldn't keep it away," she says, trembling.
"The monster from the legends?"
She nods.
"Is that what killed my son?"
You can't keep the anger out of your voice, and she seems to clamp up like a clam, making herself even smaller against the wall.
"Is the monster still here?"
The woman's face whitens to a degree you didn't think possible and though her mouth moves, no sound comes out.
Frustrated, you turn around to leave. With a last miserable whisper, the woman eeks out, "You — the throne room."
You turn to stare at her, then leave, confused and anxious. You search the halls for signs of a throne room and find a narrow hall leading to a small side door.
[[Open the side door]]
The woman's eyes are tearing up and she nods, once, then vigorously, as if unable to control herself, her fist clenched against her lips.
"The monster — it's returned — the monster —"
You stare at her, waiting for her to say more. She seems on the verge of collapse and trembles for several more seconds. You feel the pressure of impatience building inside you, the need to figure out what happened to your son.
[["I'm not here to hurt you."]]
[["Speak!"]]You open the door and step into a large room with a giant dais at the front. The throne room.
You see a woman, golden-haired, lying on the floor, her neck twisted in a horrific position, her eyes wide and unseeing, old blood in a long-dried trickle staining her lips.
For some reason, you know immediately who it is, with her familiar features — your wife. A crown, radiant as the sun, lies on its side a few paces from her head.
Right next to her is a little girl, button-nosed and long-lashed, dressed in a tulle gown you had designed for her on her birthday — just yesterday. A daughter. Your daughter. She looks just like you, you've always been told. And you see it now, in death — the parted mouth, the slack forehead, which, in life, was always scrunched in laughter.
They lie like dolls in front of the dais, where two empty seats stand.
Something snarls at your back. You whirl around and see the monster, born of grime, of woods, of something old and rotted and turned. It has no eyes but instead a gaping mouth, lined with arrow-sharp, decaying teeth, and it opens it to
(text-colour:red)[//''S C R E A M ''//]
and comes charging at you. It has arms made of tree bark, a scaly torso, and clawed feet and hands, all crawling with maggots.
You
[[attempt to stay and fight]]
[[RUN]]The woman finally breaks out of herself.
"But you are!" she screams. "You're here to kill me!" She wails, the most blood-curdling, iron-veined wail you've ever heard. She seems to start seeing things, crying and clawing at the air.
//"GET AWAY!"// she yells at you.
You back out of the room, leaving quickly, hoping she doesn't alert whatever is in the castle.
[[Right hallway]] The woman, startled by your sudden outburts, quickly faints. Annoyed, you back out of the room, fear pricking down your spine.
[[Right hallway]] "What's wrong?" you ask the woman, but she seems to have graduated from screaming to action. She gets up off the floor and gets into what looks like a fighting stance, her eyes constantly straying to the weapon in your hand.
You try to say more but she charges at you, and as if from instinct, you bring up your weapon and hit her squarely on the head with a blunt edge. She crumples to the ground like a bag of sand, and you stare, shocked at what you just did.
Turning quickly, you leave and search for a way out. Eventually, you find a door and open it to a courtyard of grass. Although the sky blushes warm and rosy, all around you are bodies.
They're everywhere. They're
corpses on corpses on corpses and (text-style:"blur")[legs and arms and hair and hands and feet ](text-style:"blurrier")[and ripped clothes and corpses tangled with corpses and overlapping arms flung over](text-style:"smear")[ (text-style:"blurrier")[corpses that lie on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses on corpses]]
You gasp, falling to your knees, trying to catch your breath.
There was some horrible beast here, but it must be long gone. You get up and head into the woods, hoping to find help or some kind of reinforcements. Someone who might know what to do.
Though you walk a long time, even the surrounding village seems deserted.
You seem to have emerged unscathed, but you feel like you're missing something.
Try to figure out what happened by going back to
The [[Beginning]]
↶↷You wake up.
It's strange—your vision is
tilt ing
but the ceiling rights itself as you sit up. You're on a bed, the blankets disordered, the drapes on the window to your right hanging askew. The walls are made of stone, naked of decoration. Your feet are bare.
To your left is a door, wooden and old. To your right, a latched window.
Window
Door